All vessels shorter than 65 feet should slow down too. All vessels 65 feet or longer must travel at 10 knots or less in this area. There are currently speed restrictions in place for ships off all major ports in the mid-Atlantic including Virginia Beach. That’s down from around 500 a decade ago, and some scientists are concerned they could go extinct if the population does not recover. There are only an estimated 350 right whales alive today. The whale was otherwise in normal to thin nutritional condition, with no evidence of recent entanglement and no obvious external evidence of trauma,” according to a statement from NOAA. More than a dozen spectators gathered around the. The injuries, consistent with a vessel (ship) strike, included multiple vertebral fractures and separations that would have resulted in death shortly after the injury. When Oregon state highway officials decided to blow up a beached whale with a half tonne of dynamite, it went about as well as one might imagine. (WWBT) - A necropsy conducted Tuesday revealed the endangered North Atlantic right whale found dead in Virginia Beach died of blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike.Įxperts discovered “the whale suffered a catastrophic blunt force traumatic injury, impacting a large portion of the vertebral column. Let the trained professionals lead the rescue.VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. Do not attempt to approach the whale on your own-you never know when that powerful tail will decide to thrash, or if they might carry diseases. If you spot a beached whale, call the local authorities immediately. The good news is that some of these whales do survive. Others die from the stress of from whatever made them beach in the first place. Handout via AFP A container ship blocking the Suez Canal like a beached whale sent new shockwaves through global trade on Thursday as officials stopped all ships entering the. Sadly, for whatever reason-illness, exhaustion, or possibly something else-some whales become re-stranded shortly after their rescue. Rescuers try to track the whales, if the suitable tracking devices are available in time. It’s an awful outcome, but usually better for the whale than allowing nature to run its course-the death of a beached whale can be a slow and grueling process. If it is impossible to return the whale back to the water in time, the whale is usually euthanized. If rescuers are able to secure the right equipment in time, the complicated process of lifting the whale and moving it into the water is undertaken. When a whale is beached and incapable of swimming, rescuers attempt to keep the whale alive by digging a trench around the whale, helping to relieve the pressure of its weight, and by keeping the whale’s skin damp and cool with wet cloths. This can be done in a few ways: rescuers can use sound to try to guide the whales out, either using recordings of the whale species’ own calls to beckon it towards a certain direction, or by playing the sounds that a predator would emit to try to steer the whales away from the shore. Rescuers can also use multiple boats to corral the whales out into deeper water. If whales are swimming in shallow waters, rescuers can attempt to redirect them back out to sea. All too often, there is simply not enough time to wait for the equipment to arrive. Stranded whales are often found in relatively remote places, which unfortunately means that access to important equipment-including medicine, cranes, heavy movers-is often nonexistent. Rescuers know that they need to work quickly to get the whale back into deep waters-a matter made even more complicated in mass strandings, like the case of the 51 pilot whales who washed ashore in Florida last year. When they’re stranded in shallow waters or completely beached, they’re in tremendous danger. Whales are heavy creatures, and they need the buoyancy of water to lighten the load of their massive organs. Trained biologists in the area are also called upon to help. These teams undergo training and are ready to pounce when they receive a command from the NOAA. The NOAA maintains teams of volunteers throughout every coastal state. Usually, the person who first sees the whale calls the local authorities, who eventually communicate the matter with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ( NOAA) Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program ( MMHSRP). Most whale rescue attempts begin with a phone call. It’s usually a fisherman or a beach dweller who first comes across the stranded whale. If you have ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of beached whale rescue, then you’ll definitely want to read on. When the rescuee weighs multiple tons, you can imagine how difficult it is to return a whale to its proper habitat. The rescue of a beached whale is a complicated matter, to say the least. When a whale washes ashore onto the coast, rescuers only have so much time to work with before the creature perishes.
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